One of the many fine stories in Graham Taylor’s posthumously published autobiography relates how, having taken his seat in the Vicarage Road dug-out for the first time in August 1977, the new Watford manager looked along the touchline to see an unmistakable figure in platform shoes striding towards him.
The subsequent presence of Elton John two seats down from him - on what was not so much the home dugout as ‘the sort of bench you’d see in a school gymnasium’ - was amplified by the chairman’s tendency to stand up and implore the fans to get behind the team, when the mood took him.